China Planning Research: Urbanization and Governance After Suburbia

Roger Keil is Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University. He researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology, cities and infectious disease, infrastructure, and regional governance. Among his publications are Suburban Planet (Polity), Pandemic Urbanism (Polity, with S.Harris Ali and Creighton Connolly) and After Suburbia (UTP with Fulong Wu).

Nicholas A. Phelps is Professor and Chair of Urban Planning and Associate Dean International in the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. He previously was Professor of Urban and Regional Development at the Bartlett School of Planning and Pro-Vice Provost Regional at UCL. He is author of The Urban Planning Imagination (Polity), Interplaces (OUP), Sequel to Suburbia (MIT), Post-Suburban Europe (Palgrave-MacMillan), editor of Old Europe, New Suburbanization (UoT), co-editor of International Perspectives on Suburbanization (Palgrave-MacMillan) and author of numerous journal articles on the subjects of suburbanization and growth planning.

Jennifer Robinson is Professor of Human Geography at University College London and co-Director of UCL’s Urban Laboratory. Previously she has worked at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the LSE and the Open University. Her book, Ordinary Cities (Routledge, 2006) developed a post-colonial critique of urban studies. Her new book, Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), proposes new methodological foundations for urban studies. Earlier empirical research explored the history of apartheid cities, and the politics of post-apartheid city-visioning. Current empirical projects focus on the politics of large-scale urban developments (London, Johannesburg, Shanghai) and the transnational circuits shaping African urbanisation (Accra, Dar es Salaam, Lilongwe).

Robin Bloch is a technical and market manager of sustainable urban development at COWI, an international engineering company. He is a city planner and has led several urban infrastructure planning and resilience projects in recent years, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of this work has incorporated research management, notably his role as team leader on the UK government-funded Urbanisation Research Nigeria program from 2013-18. His research includes industries, peripheries and politics.

Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London. He co-edited After Suburbia: Urbanization in the 21st Century with Roger Keil. His latest book is Creating Chinese Urbanism: Urban Revolution and Governance Changes (UCL Press, free downloadable from the publisher)